SDCC 07: Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron Hands-on

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We fire up our jetpacks and blast some baddies.

By Greg Miller

We knew it was going too well.

The Rebel Alliance was steadily working its way through wave after wave of Empire jerkstores with our rifles and rocket launchers. Just after our final projectile detonated in the midsection of some lame Stormtooper, we saw the massive foot of an AT-AT move into the clearing we were rocking.

Crap.

We moved across the lush, leafy and green landscape of our foreign world and up to the lumbering mass. If we were going to die decked out in our knock-off Boba Fett armor, we'd go down swinging. From far below the massive machine's face, we locked-on with the right shoulder button and began furiously tapping X to unleash a rainstorm of cover fire.

It's a trap!

We expected to be blown off the face of the map by the gigantic vehicle, but a strange thing happened -- the AT-AT just sat there and took it. We continued the onslaught until our weapon was exhausted. What was going on? Where were the bad guys?

Turns out, they were behind us. While we blasted the nearly impenetrable vehicle, the troops ditched the transport and flanked us. We were shot dead just after running out of ammunition.

Well played, Empire.

Although it's one of the PSP's biggest upcoming games -- hey, you don't see many other titles getting their own PSP paintjob -- LucasArts hasn't exactly been handing out hands-on time with Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron and everyone's favorite galaxy from far, far away. That changed at San Diego Comic-Con.

The roof. The roof is on fire.

An exclusive PSP installment in the Battlefront franchise, Renegade Squadron follows the tale of the "galaxy's toughest scoundrels," a crew assembled by Han Solo to take on quests around the universe. These battles take place in a Warhawk-like environment full of firefights, vehicles and spawn points.

Getting the chance to play the game from the main menu gave a glimpse at just how deep LucasArts is looking to make Renegade Squadron. From the get-go, you have the obvious choice of going single player or multiplayer, but there's also the ability to pop into "Customization" and deck out how your character would look as a member of the Rebel Alliance, the Empire, the Republic and the CIS. You get to choose a body, head, color scheme and logo for each model and then see them displayed when you hit the multiplayer arenas for some person-to-person blasting.

Single player offered three separate options for you to help save the world. "Instant Action" has you choose a planet (there were eight playable including Geonosis, Hoth and Mustafar), a mode (only conquest was open to us) and an era (Galactic Civil War was our only option) and head off to fight.